Analysis of Facebook Content

When considering content strategies for your Facebook account, look to Erika J. Brookes’ whitepaper “The Anatomy of a Facebook Post.” Brookes, the Vice President of Marketing at Vitrue - a social relationship management platform, offers plenty of advice on when to post, how to post and what to post. She uses analytics data to demonstrate how to drive engagement and, ultimately, success.

In “The Anatomy of Facebook Post,” Brookes measures three types of Facebook engagement: text, image and video posts. From her research, she found that photo posts, not video, drive the most engagement across all brands and business verticals.  This may be due to the fact that video takes more time to watch, whereas a photo can be instantly digested and doesn’t require any time dedication.

While type of engagement is important, Brookes argues that encouraged interaction relies mostly on the type of content posted. In sum: your content has to be good. Another helpful tip to increase engagement is to pay attention to various factors, including the tone and writing style of your messages and wall posts, your content, and your ability to tell a story through quality videos and photographs.

The results of Brooke’s analysis also showed that if Facebook content is posted in the morning, it tends to encourage a higher engagement than posts occurring after the noon hour. This correlates directly with the theory that many people check their Facebook first thing in the morning. One exception to this theory is in the quick service restaurant industry, where afternoon posts drive a higher level of engagement than morning posts. Saturday and Sunday are the two days of the week that receive the lowest amount of engagement, while Friday attracts the most engagement, followed by Monday, Tuesday then Thursday. Post effectiveness is determined by comments, likes and shares, and also takes into consideration each community’s size.

When developing social strategies for your company, team or organization, it is important to keep this data in mind, so that your posted content encourages engagement within your page. Take a tip out of Brookes’ playbook and develop content that’s meaningful. Your success will come after that.